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Prove you exist

I get tired of reading non-believers posts about how believers must prove why we trust in God and know he exist.

So, I decided to have some fun with this. I decided to play your game against you.

I want you to prove you exist.

Do you think you exist because you can sense things? How do you know that you are really actually seeing something? hearing something? thinking something? How can you actually prove that you really doing these things? Is there no possibility that this is the case?

You say, "because you interact with people" well, how do you know that you really are interacting with them? Could they not be mere figments of your imagination? Is this not a possibility?

I want you to definitively prove that you really exist. Also, I want you to state what it would take to prove or disprove that you really exist.

You cannot. In fact, it is more possible to prove that God exist rather than you....why is that?

Re: Prove you exist

Err you do realize most of that is circular definition right? Even when it isn't, it still uses other abstract words like "being" or "life" that requires further definition to be useful.

Problem is, until you get a clear definition that relies on unambiguous words that everyone agrees on, it's not possible to prove anything. Though, I'll give you a simple answer to your original question:

Do I know that I absolutely exist? No, I don't.
But I assume that I do for practical reasons.

I also hold that it's impossible to prove that I exist or that God exists in the absolute sense; absoluteness by definition surpasses anything, even logic, and we are bounded by logic.

Re: Prove you exist

Originally Posted by princefigs

I get tired of reading non-believers posts about how believers must prove why we trust in God and know he exist.

Those silly non-believers with their darn intellectual honesty. Those dipsh1ts. Always demanding we use the same set of logical rules for every claim. Tossing out theistic double standards. Not letting you get away with your fallacies. Where the hell do they get off?

So, I decided to have some fun with this. I decided to play your game against you.

No. You haven't. If you were playing our game against us then you'd start by examining your own beliefs to make sure you use the same set of rules to evaluate all claims. So, either you'd be an atheist (by adopting normal logic) or you'd believe in all religions including Scientology (special pleadings are okay not just for your religion, but for all of them).

If your above quoted statement was a failed attempt at clever, then I forgive you. Otherwise, don't lie.

I want you to prove you exist.

Hello. I'm a philosophy 101 class. Have we met?

Do you think you exist because you can sense things?

Partially, but that's not what it hinges on.

How do you know that you are really actually seeing something?

That's not germane to your original challenge... or maybe you believe that blind people aren't real?

hearing something?

The deaf as well? Just a conspiracy of the hearing aid manufacturers?

thinking something?

That thing you just tripped over? That object that you're cursing for getting your knees all scraped up? Yeah... that's the truth. I'm not surprised you didn't recognize it when you saw it. It can be hard to recognize after a childhood of looking upwards for a god that's not there. FYI, thinking is what proves we exist. It cannot be faked by any means we know of and even if it could, there would still have to be something there (my mind) to be fooled.

So, congratulations. You've succeeded in figuring out what the Ohio State drop out turned pizza deliverer for my neighborhood picked up in between bong hits and ultimate disc prior to dropping out.

Re: Prove you exist

saying that something cannot be faked by any means that we know does not prove we exist. How do we know that everything that we see is real? How do we know that we are not all part of some singularity? How do we know that we are thinking about anything? How can we be certain that everyone around us is real? How can we be sure that everyone is simply not a figment of our imagination?

Point is, it is impossible to prove that anything we experience is real. Is is much more possible to prove that God exist than it is to prove we do.

You see, God could come to to earth and show himself to you. He could talk to you in such a way that made you certain that he was real. There is no way at all that we could be certain about our own existence.

There is no way to absolutely prove anything in reality.

I tend to ignore idiotic posts that do not respond to the OP, like Zvar

Re: Prove you exist

FYI, thinking is what proves we exist. It cannot be faked by any means we know of and even if it could, there would still have to be something there (my mind) to be fooled.

I guess I really have to bold it for you. This makes the entire first paragraph of your last post meaningless since they're raising the question that Zhav already answered.

Now answer again!

Meanwhile...

You see, God could come to to earth and show himself to you. He could talk to you in such a way that made you certain that he was real. There is no way at all that we could be certain about our own existence.

There is no way to absolutely prove anything in reality.

I would say that this line of thinking means that human beings cannot hold perfect knowledge. So then, you're never absolutely, 100% sure that you know the absolute truth of something (e.g. God), because there's always the chance that everything you have ever experienced (that has brought you to God) is an illusion.

I don't see how it helps any theist to make this kind of argument. Can you please expand on it?

Re: Prove you exist

This debate is very fallacious because how do we even know the world exists? Is this whole world just images created through a complex organism or "thing"? Is everything we know, will know, and will never know just a part of some organism's collection? There is no way to prove me wrong or right.